Please Don’t Die, My Lady

Chapter 32

The summer when I was 14, on the night of a waning moon.

After my mother’s particularly brutal kicking that day, I helped my sibling up from where she lay.

Normally, her face would have been twisted in tears or pain, but this time, it was unusually bright.

She was smiling.

When I blinked, I realized my sibling had wrapped her entire body around mine.

Moments earlier, she’d endured insults and violence from the mother she adored, yet now she held me tightly and whispered that she loved me.

Something was clearly wrong.

But it had been so long since I’d seen her smile that I suppressed the unease gnawing at me.

She didn’t seem as restless or unstable as Father had during his final moments.

In fact, she looked calmer than usual.

Why didn’t I understand then? That the peace she felt was the relief of leaving behind this wretched reality?

Like a fool, I let her go when she said she wanted to bathe alone.

And that was the end of her.

Two hours later, I found her in the tub.

Her wrists were slit, and she was submerged.

The bathwater, dyed red, clashed chillingly with her pale, ghostly skin.

Her eyes, even in death, remained open, staring at the void.

What was she gazing at so longingly?

Did that man who wasn’t even like a father to us come to greet her in her final moments?

I convinced myself he did.

Because if I didn’t believe she had found happiness in death, I wouldn’t have been able to endure it.

So I believed it.

The death of a 13-year-old child.

It was suicide, yet also murder.

Horribly enough, the culprits were the two people she had cherished most.

I stood there for a moment, staring at her lifeless body, before heading to my mother’s room.

For the first time in my life, I raised my voice, shouting, screaming, flailing my hands and feet.

Perhaps the saying that children mimic their parents is true because I repeated everything they had done to us.

It wasn’t until my mother used magic to hurl me against the wall that I crumbled to the floor, tears streaming for the first time.

I cried.

When my father died, not a single tear had fallen, but now they flowed uncontrollably.

My mother, puzzled by my behavior, went to check the bathroom. 

Moments later, another voice joined my sobbing—her scream, filled with despair.

“I’m sorry. I love you. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

The same words my father had uttered.

But my sibling was no longer there to hear them.

Unlike me, she had probably always waited for those words.

Why?

Why only now?

Disgusting.

Why do humans only regret after everything falls apart?

I hated my parents, but this wasn’t about just them.

I was revolted by myself, unable to bear my own existence.

Even as I watched my sibling deteriorate right in front of me, I did nothing.

The worst perpetrator of all was the one who stood closest and did nothing—me.

The two culprits who killed my sibling: my mother and me.

***

After that day, the violence in our home ceased.

Naturally, as there were only two of us left.

I wasn’t even sure if what remained could be called a “family.”

My mother and I, trapped in a strange and unfamiliar relationship, didn’t know how to face each other.

I intentionally ignored her, and she lacked the will to care about me.

It took nearly a year before we could exchange even the smallest semblance of conversation.

But those conversations never carried the warmth of a mother-daughter bond.

Our relationship had dried to the bone, devoid of feeling.

I didn’t find it particularly sad.

I had long since been drained of the affection that might have made me grieve.

Even months later, my father’s and sibling’s deaths felt fundamentally different.

There was a brief time when I wanted to follow them, but each attempt ended with me backing out at the last moment.

I was afraid of death.

The thought alone made my limbs tremble, and the corpses I had seen twice now flashed before my eyes.

In the end, I realized I valued my own existence above all else.

Maybe that’s why, unlike my sibling, I never once thought of dying, even when my father’s violence was at its peak.

After abandoning the idea of suicide, I looked at my still-living mother and thought she must be like me.

If she were like my father, she would have ended her life long ago.

Perhaps I was reassured, thinking that at least she would stay by my side until the end.

And for quite a long time, she did stay with me.

It took years for me to realize how mistaken I had been.

My mother began teaching me.

Apparently, I had a natural talent for magic.

She said I could reach her level within a few years of dedicated practice.

For someone like me, who had planned to leave this false barony the moment I came of age, it was a welcome opportunity.

Magicians were well-respected in the Empire, a nation of magical prowess.

With no reason to refuse, I silently took her lessons.

Ironically, my mother was a far better teacher than she ever was a parent, leaving me with little to complain about.

Two years passed.

It was winter when I turned 16, on an especially cold day when we were inspecting the mansion’s heating system.

Our relationship had shifted over the past few months. It would be more accurate to call us a teacher and student than mother and daughter.

I had absorbed all my mother’s knowledge.

She said my progress was faster than expected and suggested I seek better teachers at an academy later.

As she said this, she stroked my hair, looking oddly relieved yet hollow.

The look was familiar.

It was my third time seeing it. There was no way I could miss the signs now.

I didn’t hesitate.

I told her, “Don’t die.”

Her eyes widened in surprise before softening into a faint smile. She pulled me into an embrace.

It had been nearly three years since we shared such warmth.

Her arms, no longer broader, no longer comforting, no longer intimidating, carried only physical warmth now.

Her grip tightened.

The shoulder pressed against my face gradually grew damp.

This wasn’t an embrace meant to console me.

It was an embrace for her own comfort.

Around that time, I understood what my mother was trying to do.

It wasn’t difficult to discern.

After all, I had become a mage just like her.

Even so, a separate feeling lingered: the displeasure of realizing I was, once again, too late.

When I stayed silent, my mother began to mumble something, her face still buried in my shoulder.

Her voice was so faint it was hard to hear unless I strained to listen.

She said she loved me.

That it wasn’t out of hatred.

That she was sorry.

That she was a wretched woman.

That she shouldn’t have given birth to us.

That she shouldn’t have married him.

Surely, I had been the only one to read and tear up my father’s letter.

But apparently, a couple remains a couple even in their dying words—her final confession was disturbingly similar to his.

When she finished speaking and stepped back from my embrace, her face was filled with relief and tranquility.

It was as though she was glad to finally have said those words, as though she had finally atoned.

But I hadn’t let go of anything yet.

Why did she selfishly find her peace alone?

If she wanted absolution, she should have spent her life in regret and died later than me.

I hated the idea of her running away like my father had, leaving me behind once more.

I opened my mouth to hurl these words at her, but it was already too late.

Her neck had fallen, severed, and rolled to the ground.

Blood spurted from the cut in her carotid artery, and the body that had been seated in the chair collapsed backward.

It was likely the result of a spell she had set up in advance.

The clean, precise cut, as though from an exceptionally sharp blade, was gruesomely vivid, as if the beheading were still alive.

I stood there, letting the splattering blood soak me, and locked eyes with her decapitated head as it lay on the floor.

Even severed from her body, her face continued to smile.

It seemed frozen that way.

So I think I smiled, too.

Honestly, it was a little funny.

How ridiculous I looked now, left all alone.

Concealing her death wasn’t difficult.

By then, I had become a mage on her level.

Her decision to die only after raising me entirely was probably because she was worried about what would happen after her death.

Still, she was a better person than my father.

Though emotionally repulsive in the same way, objectively speaking, she was.

After finishing everything, I lay down on my bed and wondered what I should do next.

Then, on a bit of a whim, I filled out an academy application.

It was an escape, in truth.

I didn’t want to spend another second in this mansion.

But unlike others who escaped through death, I still clung to life.

I thought that if I threw everything away and went far away, perhaps the broken parts of me might start functioning again.

I won’t deny that her advice influenced me.

After all, regardless of everything, she was my biological mother.

The love she had given me in my childhood still lingered vividly in my memory.

So I thought I could at least follow her final advice as my teacher.

But as the thought crossed my mind, my eyes unexpectedly began to sting.

I blinked irritably several times, but the pain wouldn’t subside.

It was the kind of pain that was annoyingly persistent.

Of course, I didn’t feel anything special about her death.

I wasn’t in my right mind enough to mourn being left alone now.

The only reason for this ache, I was sure, was my anger at being the only one left who remembered my sibling’s death.

There was no other explanation.

There couldn’t be.

I cried.

All night long.

***

I found a girl collapsed at the bottom of the stairs.

She was someone I had seen being bullied in the classroom a few times.

Back then, I had ignored it, not wanting to get involved.

But seeing her bleeding now reminded me of my sibling from back then.

Before I realized it, I had taken a step toward her.